Santa Cruz Sentinel from Santa Cruz, California • Page 14

mm'mm 'f mm m) 'I Cruz Sentinel Friday, March 25, 1983 Teen-agers contemplate computers of the future By LORETTA NOFFSINGER SUNNYVALE (AP) Computers without keyboards, toys that come to life at the sound of a child's voice and programs that shoulder the chores of thank-you letters that's what the whiz kids see in the future. They envision a computer disguised within a toy to tell youngsters about the workings of the universe and others "far beyond man's imagination." And Atari is listening to them. Spouting ideas, a half-dozen youngsters attended a brainstorming session with the home computer and video game company this week as part of Atari's two-day youth advisory board meeting. "What we are doing," explained Helen Gray, Atari's vice president of public relations, "is establishing a relationship with kids all over the country and really listening to what they are saying." The young computer aficiandos often face problems because of their high- technology interests, like "parents who don't understand what computers are all about. In some parts of the country, the games are perceived as addictive," she added.

The forum provides encouragement to the whiz kids and clues to Atari for its decision-making on tomorrow's com puters. Musa Mustafa, 15, says he hopes to design an astronomy program to chart the location of stars and planets at specific times "so that I can easily track them down in a telescope." The Walnut sophomore, who will skip his junior year at Rowland High School, New U.S. satellite will improve rescue operations LOS ANGELES (AP) An American search-and-rescue satellite goes aloft next week to join a Russian satellite that's already saving lives in an international experiment to spot downed planes and sinking ships from space, officials said Thursday. "Since we started working with the Soviet satellite COSPAS I (last year), there have been 22 lives saved and we are just really getting started," Bernard J. Trudell said of the demonstration project that also includes Canada and France as prime partners.

"Some of those people absolutely would not be alive and walking around today if it wasn't for that satellite. The others were assists," he told a news conference. Trudell is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's mission manager for SARSAT, or Search and Rescue Satellite, which is to be launched from Van- denberg Air Force Base Monday, weather permitting. The instruments for detecting and pinpointing signals from emergency locator beacons on private planes and ocean-going ships are being carried as passengers on an RCA-built weather-monitoring satellite called NOAA-E, that will be operated by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. The new satellite, in a north-south orbit about 530 miles high, will scan the entire earth every 12 hours.

By bouncing the distress signal down to designated ground stations in any of several nations, the satellite can locate a downed plane within 12 miles. "The object of this project is to shorten the time between the occurrence of distress and the means saving lives and reducing the costs of rescue operations," Trudell said. That was graphically demonstrated in the first rescue, on Sept. 10, 1982, barely a week after the joint effort began. The Canadian government had concluded an unsuccessful $2 million search for a pilot missing in the rugged forests of northern British Columbia, but the victim's father, also a pilot, continued to search on his own, NASA says.

The father and two passengers failed to return from a search Sept. 9 and the satellatie search program was notified. COSPAS I heard the distress beacon the next day, Canadian ground technicians located the crash site and helicopters quickly rescued the three passengers, all seriously injured. All three survived and the cost, NASA said, "was minimal." Trudell said the plane, virtually invisible from the air, "was in a valley surrounded by mountains," which blocked the radio signal except to receivers directly overhead. "That's why airplanes couldn't find it and that's the advantage of satellites, they can look down into mountains." NASA says the United States is spending about $29 million on the project, with Canada and France together adding another $24 million.

Cost of the Soviet effort, which is independent but coordinated with NASA, is unreported. Federal law requires ships and private planes to carry emergency radio beacons which, when activated by impact, transmit a continous and distinctive signal. But unless a plane passes within about 100 miles of the transmitter and has a receiver on the distress signal will note be heard. That problem should be solved by satellites. But the nature of the distress signal, designed for aircraft rather than satellite detection, means the space-borne also envisions computers designing computers.

This year, they're helping him make a movie about the 1984 Olympics. A combination of computer animation and film, the endeavor will "open a new category" in the Los Angeles International Film Exposition this spring, he says. Meilin Wong, featured two years ago in Time magazine as a computer whiz, foresees computers that will compose complete letters using only an outline from the person using the machine. The 16-year-old Ridgewood, N.J., girl suggests that on command, the computer would use "big sounding words. No more Christmas-letter writing." She also expects that in five years computers will be found in children's toys.

Remote terminals are what 14-year-old Robert Allbritton, of Washington, DC, expects of future computers, plus built-in telecommunications systems. They'll recognize speech patterns and run without keyboards, he adds. The eighth grader at St. Albans School runs Aladdin's Lamp, a computerized message service in which others can "call into my system and leave messages." Using monikers, "Lex Luthor" calls "Yosemite Sam" with a message and anybody from "Superman" to "Sam Spade" can snoop into the electronic exchange. "It's a free service and there are quite a few around Washington," he says.

In New Orleans, 17-year-old Kerrie Holton teaches fourth graders to use Apple Computers because she got bored with school and decided that I needed something to convince myself to wake up in the mornings." A senior at Isidore Newman High School, she also is enrolled in a second-, semester calculus course at Tulane University. Todd Bridges, the 18-year-old star of the television show, "Different Strokes," is writing a combination mind boggier-war game. Computers of the future, he says, "are going to be something far beyond man's imagination." searcher can only be effective when it is within direct sight of both the crash and a ground station. The satellite acts as a mirror to collect the signal and bounce it back to earth for analysis. The northern hemisphere is generally well-covered, Trudell said, "but in the southern hemisphere there is very little coverage.

We're going to fix that." NASA has designed a new type of emergency radio beacon and the French have built an on-board device for deciphering the signal it puts out. Still strictly experimental, the more powerful signal should allow the satellite to locate a crash within one to three miles. More importantly, the satellite can store the decoded signal and transmit it earthward whenever it passes a ground station. The signal, Trudell said, would indicate the kind of craft in trouble, its location, nationality and registration number and even the type of emergency. "You could fly an airplane anywhere in the world, crash into the Brazilian jungle and know that a satellite pretty soon is going to pick you up and notify Trudell said.

About 50 of the special transmitters will be tested with the satellite during its experimental phase this year, he said. Two more of the systems are being added to future NOAA satellites and the Soviets are working on a compatible system, Trudell said. If it proves out and is funded, he said, a fully operational satellite search program could be working within about 10 years. Churches offer Central Americans sanctuary Friends Meeting House; Orange County Unitarian Universalist Church; Sepulveda Unitarian Universalist Church; Angelica Lutheran in Los Angeles. Emergeson Unitarian Church in Canoga Park is scheduled to vote next month on whether to church, both in Palo Alto, and Sacred Heart Church of San Jose, were to join two others in San Francisco Thursday and 10 in Berkeley that took the same action last year, said the Rev.

Gustav H. Schultz of the University Lutheran Chapel in Berkeley. Los Angeles area churches participating in were, in the San Francisco Bay area in 1982, said Carlos Valdes, coordinator for the Central America refugee project in Santa Clara County which involves three churches so far. "It would be virtually impossible to house them in such numbers," Valdes said. "(But) we will assist those who come to us.

We are talking about a hidden population of frightened people." The churches' announcements were timed to commemorate the third an niversary of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador. San Francisco INS district director David Ilchert described the announce-. ments as invitations to political confrontation. "My feeling here is the good religious people are seeking some avenue of confrontation or publicity to espouse a political view or a foreign policy attitude that is contrary to what the present administration, is doing," Ilchert said. It is unlikely that INS agents would bother enter-.

ing churches in search of illegal aliens, Ilchert said. "We haven't been knocking on parish doors and asking the good padres, 'Do you have any illegal aliens in Ilchert said. INS Los Angeles spokesman Joe Flanders said, "The Department of Justice is studying the legal ramifications of this and we will be complying with the department's regulations whenever they come down." The three Santa Clara churches, St. Ann Chapel and University Luthern By Tbe Associated Press Churches around California are offering sanctuary to what one spokesman called "a hidden population of frightened people" who say they face death if deported home to Central America. Ricardo-and Noemi Zelada and their daughter, Adalila, 6, were already housed at the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles before Thursday's announcement by that church and others around the state.

Mrs. Zelada, 30, fears retribution because her hus the movement include: Pico Rivera United Meth odist Church; First Con- gregationalist Church and Throop Memorial Unitarian Universalist Church in Pasadena; Claremont band, 48, was active in Salvadoran politics. Al though her husband and daughter have been allowed to remain here, Mrs. Zelada on was ordered deported Feb. 7.

"In El Salvador, if just one member of a family is involved, the whole family is involved," Mrs. Zelada said. "I haven't heard from my brothers for over two years. I am terrified of going back. We are known by the government.

Zelada, shaking his head, slowly, said, "I feel respon sible for what has happened to Noemi. She has been persecuted because of my political involvement. If cDnnrP ng fain UULb U3 IMy she goes, I have to go with her. I can't let her return to that country alone to face the things that will happen 2-PIECE SOFA LOVE SEAT Regularly $1098. to her." First Unitarian's Rev.

Philip Zwerling says thel ioth masi U.S. immigration and Natu-H ralization Service enter (rood -Friday Apri 1 1 8p.m. Caster Sunday April 3 7p.m. Civic Auditorium churches legally in sanctuary cases but hasn't done so because of "the spectacle of dragging innocent people out of churches under the scrutiny of television cameras." An estimated 60,000 Central American refugees Secretary to receive $150,000 SAN FRANCISCO (AP) A secretary who battled the Bank of America says she's happy with the $150,000 awarded in a ruling that scolded the nation's largest commercial bank for "callous indifference" to her credit card nightmare. "I'm so pleased, so happy," Chris Young, 34, of Monterey said about a ruling by the California Court of Appeals, which upheld the damages she won in 1980 after the theft of her credit card.

It was possible the battle wasn't yet over, however. The bank issued a statement saying it was considering a further appeal, although Ms. Young's attorney, Andrew Swartz, said he hoped the bank wouldn't drag the case out further. "It's a great all consumers," Swartz said. had some sort of trouble with computer-generated bills." SOFA BED MATCHING LOVE SEAT Both for only Handsome Comtemporary styled Pair in vibrant striped Herculon covers.

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